


the two-body problem

by silverhedges



Category: Gintama
Genre: Creepy, Gen, Parenthood, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2019-04-24 04:59:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14348448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverhedges/pseuds/silverhedges
Summary: What makes me me and you you?





	the two-body problem

A person could think themselves to death.

.

You have this recurring fantasy. A small house, big enough for an adult and a child. Situated right beside a little stream. In the summer you sit on the side and read a book while your child plays in the water. You grow vegetables and fruit. In the winter you wrap knitted blankets around yourselves and sleep often. You play and read and live. No one ever knocks on your door. You are safe. They are safe from you.

It’s a fantasy, of course, because no one is ever safe from you.

.

It would be nice to be less self-aware. Or to be irrational and delusional. If eternal life could be a dream and not reality, you would be happier. Well. Happy. That’s one of the (many) problems with eternal life; you tire of everything. Emotional exhaustion.

You do mean that. You feel the years on you, you feel your age. You are an old man and you have seen this all before. There are no new tricks. Even if there are, you cannot be taught them; you are a dog who only knows how to kill and then slink back to its master. (Who is the master? Yourself, of course.)

Eventually you realise that every gorgeous view of the sunlight shining through the trees be will seen again. The sun rises every day. There is no need to look at this sunrise. The cherry blossoms will bloom next spring. There is no need to mourn the bare branches in winter. When you know this could be the last time, beauty becomes precious.

When you have unlimited time and opportunity, beauty becomes nothing.

.

Do you ever look in the mirror and for a split second you find a stranger? In that split second, there is eternity and you wonder who is this person, why are you wearing their skin, is this what other people see when they look at you, this inscrutable blank-faced stranger?

And you think, what separates me from another person? I could have ended up being someone else. All that divides us is the different experiences we have had. Experience is just memory lodged in your mind. It could be implanted. You could wake up tomorrow as someone else and never know the difference. Perhaps you woke up like that today. Maybe all of this is just a dream.

Have you ever tried to be someone else?

It’s quite easy.

.

[Set scene. A family dinner table.

Shouyou serves the vegetables on the table.

Shouyou: It is important to eat them, Gintoki. Grow up healthy and strong. Sensei would be very disappointed if you died young because you only ate parfaits.

Utsuro: What the hell are you playing at? Playing house? The only real person here is yourself.

End scene.]

.

When you started out you called it wearing a mask, called it self-preservation. By the time there is a literal crow mask on your face, you don’t even realise the irony.

What is a person, in the acting sense? A person is body language, tone of voice, the words they choose when they speak. Their habits. Do they fidget, do they doodle? Do they sit there calmly, eerily? Do they pick up a knife and kill everyone in the room because it’s easier than engaging in conversation?

.

[Shouyou: You say _I_ am the one with problems.

Shouyou gestures at all the blood on the carpet.

Utsuro: We all have bad habits.]

.

For a person who is nothing, it is easy to be everything. It is easy to wake up tomorrow as a different person. For a long time, you are a deadly government assassin, because it is a comfortable routine and you know how to do it. To spice it up, one day you decide to run away and become a kind-hearted teacher. When doing that is too hard, you give it up and become an edgy goth who wants to destroy the world.

Your child says you are having a mid-life crisis, but get real: at this stage, it must be a late-life crisis.

.

After dying a couple of thousand times, you start to want it. You start to crave it. Pain has long since stopped being an issue. The thought sneaks into your mind, infects your choices. When you wake up, you want it. When you go to sleep, you want it. In your head, suicide is a place you go to and never come back from. It is an escape. It is the final unknown and you want it because you can’t have it.

Despite this, whenever anyone tries to kill you, you still always pick up the nearest sharp object and kill until there’s nothing left to kill.

You debate with yourself. Is this some instinctive form of self-preservation? Is it a side effect of Altana?

No. You know, deep down through all the layers of lies you have fed yourself, the truth. Like a child, you just want petty revenge. Yes all the people who hurt me are dead. Yes I hurt more people than hurt me now. Yes I want everyone to suffer the way I have suffered because I want you to regret ever hurting me even if it was not you and if this means the entire world has to die before I am satisfied than so be it.

.

It turns out even children are wiser than you.

.

[Start scene. Shouyou is writing in his green book. Utsuro is lounging somewhere, wearing all black and pouting because he hates this.

Shouyou: I have a soul.

Utsuro: There is no doer behind the deed. All we must do is live with the consequences and you can always murder the consequences anyway.

Shouyou, louder: I have a _soul_. There is something inside me that knows that killing is bad and raising children is good. My natural impulses are beastly and demonic. Demons give up their souls because all they know is how to kill and so that is all they do.

Utsuro: So, you’re admitting you’re a demon? Admission is the first step to sinking further into addiction!

Shouyou: Admission is the first step to recovery. We are admitting here that there is a problem. Problems, by nature, should be fixed. And so, we have to –

Utsuro: But why should we fix our problems? Can’t we just go cause problems for other people?

Shouyou: You really are a child.]

.

Sitting by the stream in the fading summer light, Gintoki is grinning. “So we have to fight against ourselves?”

You stare back at him in shock.

He tosses his head, the arrogant little boy. “So we use our sword just to protect our soul, not to kill or save our life. Sometimes protecting our soul means giving up our sword. Sometimes it means killing the person you love, if it’s the right thing to do. Because giving in to yourself and killing everyone or saving the person you love, it wouldn’t be protecting our soul.”

One day you are in a bloody battlefield and there is another demon there. A baby one. You pick him up but really it’s him picking you up. This boy has a way of making everyone around him a better person. Or maybe every parent feels that way.

“You can’t just do whatever you want without facing the consequences,” the boy says, eyes lazy. His soul shines silver.

.

Tell me this: what is your deepest platonic love? First love, or when you find yourself loving after thinking you could never love again?

It’s the second, of course. First love is wild, passionate, head-over-heels. It is emotion without reins. But first love is so fierce because it is your first time: you could love anyone this way, if it is for the first time. When you’re empty, you pass by many people you could love, and you don’t. In that discernment, you learn the true value of love. So, when love comes to you again, when you sit with someone and your chest is warm when you look at them, that is your deepest love.

.

You could try to explain the miraculous effect of becoming a parent, but all you can say is clichés. Just know that it’s true, how having kids changes you fundamentally. You are no longer one selfish person: your body is separated in two and if anything happened to that other half, it would rip your own heart out.

.

[Shouyou: I’ve figured you out.

Utsuro: Oh? Try me.

Shouyou: You’re scared of changing.

Utsuro: All you know how to do is kill people. You can’t suddenly up and decide to be a teacher.

Shouyou: If my child can spend a lifetime killing people and then raise two children of his own successfully, I would say that I can do that too.]

.

When you sleep, you do not dream. That state is the closest to death you have ever come.

**Author's Note:**

> I've never really liked the way the Gorilla makes a clear distinction between Shouyou and Utsuro. It's not realistic, plus it's much more fun (sad) if it's ambiguous as to whether Utsuro is Shouyou. Yeah Gintoki, your dad decided being Good was too hard so he went and tried out being Extra Evil. Boo hoo.


End file.
